VIDEO

Photos

The cover of the 2017 Wildlands and Woodlands conservation report. Courtesy of Highstead and the Harvard Forest.

Development claims 24,000 acres of forestland a year in New England, according to data from 1990 to 2010. By 2060, that could mean another 1.2 million acres lost. Photo by David Foster.

Conserved forests (like those around the Quabbin Reservoir in Massachusetts, shown here at left; and Sebago Lake in Maine, shown here at right) provide clean drinking water to millions of New England residents, without the need for costly filtration plants. Photo of the Quabbin Reservoir by Clarisse Hart; Photo of Sebago Lake by Mark Hunt, courtesy of the Portland Water District.

The majority of forests in the Wildlands and Woodlands vision would be open to a variety of management types. Sustainable wood harvest supports local economies, creates new habitat for rare, open-land species, and can be compatible with carbon sequestration goals. Photo by Spencer Meyer.

The W&W vision calls for protecting at least 7% of the New England landscape as farmland, reducing the global impact of the region’s food supply by localizing fruit and vegetable production and shifting livestock increasingly towards a pasture base. Photo by Cheryl Daigle.

The Wildlands and Woodlands vision seeks to permanently protect nearly 80 percent of the landscape (30 million acres) in forestland, predominantly actively managed woodlands, expansive wildlands where nature prevails, and farmland (2.8 million acres) by 2060. Photo by David Foster.

New England forests and open land supports recreation and sporting for local residents while also engaging a $10 billion annual tourist industry. Photo by Ryan Burton.

Wildlife depend on intact landscapes that the Wildlands and Woodlands vision seeks to protect. Photo by Ryan Burton.

MAPS & FIGURES

All maps and figures from the report are included here.
Please do not publish without citing data sources.
(click image to download high-res)

Data primarily from Highstead and the Trust for Public Land. Complete references available in M. Buchanan. 2016. Public conservation funding in New England: recent trends in government spending on land protection. Highstead, Redding, CT.